Flood Control: NGO Urges Investment In Infrastructure

Protest to Power Move
ment/Citizens Action to Take Back Nigeria, an NGO, has urged government at all levels to invest more in infrastructure for flood control and defence.
The National Coordinator of the NGO, Mr Jaye Gaskia, gave the advice in an interview with newsmen in Abuja. “We need as a country to invest more in preventive and mitigative actions against flood.
“This includes investing in infrastructure for flood control and flood defence.
“It also include building embankments along river banks and relocating communities from flood plains where necessary,” he said. According to him, communities will need to have access to flood resistant crops, as well as to flood resistance buildings and technology. “All of these require a different approach to governance; a grassroots based participatory and multi-stakeholder approach to governance.
“Communities need to be convinced on why they need to be relocated and why they need to understand that they can still have seasonal access to their lands.
“They need to know that their land will not be reclaimed and then sold to moneybags and politicians.” Gaskia urged relevant government’s agencies to come out with accurate data to quantify what the country lost to flood. He explained that the serial loses of this country to flood disasters should be quantified.
According to him, we do not even have accurate information from across the country with respect to number of fatalities, number of those who suffer injuries and number of properties destroyed. The NGO boss urged the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and State Emergency Management Agencies (SEMAs) to undertake and oversee the task of collating and producing data. He said NEMA and SEMA should take record of disaster on human, material and economic loss across the country. “It is only in this way that we make evidence based cost benefit analysis for investment in prevention and mitigation.
“The constitution provides for a certain percentage of revenue accruing to the country to be dedicated to an Ecological Fund. So, there shouldn’t be too much of a problem with money. “What has happened to this fund over the years? On the basis of the constitutionally determined percentage, what ought to have gone into this fund in the current fiscal year of 2016 for instance? “And how is this being utilised? This is the kind of things that the ecological fund should be deployed to address through NEMA,” he said.